Evaluation of Residual Disease Following Transcanal Totally Endoscopic vs Postauricular Surgery Among Children With Middle Ear and Attic Cholesteatoma
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Importance: Transcanal totally endoscopic ear surgery (TEES) improves tympanic cavity visibility during cholesteatoma resection but does not readily permit 2-handed surgery, which is possible with a postauricular approach and use of an operating microscope. Improved visibility and 2-handed access may reduce rates of incomplete surgical clearance and residual cholesteatoma. Objective: To compare rates of residual cholesteatoma after TEES vs those after open surgery with a postauricular approach for initial disease limited to the middle ear and/or attic. Design, Setting, and Participants: This propensity score-matched cohort study considered a consecutive sample of 209 pediatric cases of cholesteatomas resected at a tertiary referral center between January 1, 2005, and December 31, 2017, by either TEES or postauricular approach. The 177 cases (84.7%) in 172 patients that were eligible for inclusion in the study had undergone at least 1 of the following assessments: second-look tympanoplasty, diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging, or in-clinic follow-up examination at least 2 years after the operation. Ears were matched on the basis of the propensity score, a function of age, sex, comorbid diagnoses, etiology, disease extent, ossicular chain condition, presence or absence of tympanic membrane perforation, and otorrhea status at the time of surgery. Exposures: Transcanal totally endoscopic ear surgery was defined as a transcanal approach with surgeon-reported use of an endoscope for resection of cholesteatoma. Use of an operating microscope was permitted in the TEES group for graft placement during tympanoplasty. The postauricular approach was characterized by a postauricular incision and use of an operative microscope with or without adjunct use of an endoscope. Main Outcomes and Measures: Residual cholesteatoma. Results: Of 177 cases included in the study, the unmatched cohort consisted of 65 ears that had undergone TEES (mean [SD] age, 9.9 [3.6] years; 33 [50.8%] female) and 112 ears of patients who had undergone surgery with a postauricular approach (mean [SD] age, 9.9 [3.5] years; 72 [64.3%] male). Propensity score matching was accomplished for a total of 128 cases, with 64 in each group. After matching, standardized differences between TEES and postauricular approaches were less than 0.20 for all measured baseline characteristics, indicating balanced groups. The TEES group had a residual disease incidence of 4 of 64 (6.3%) compared with 7 of 64 (10.9%) in the propensity score-matched postauricular approach group (absolute risk difference, -4.7%; 95% CI, -14.8% to 5.4%). Conclusions and Relevance: This study's findings suggest that there was no apparent advantage of the 2-handed postauricular microscopic approach with respect to surgical clearance of cholesteatoma limited to the middle ear and/or attic. Transcanal totally endoscopic ear surgery may be an effective alternative to a postauricular approach for removal of limited cholesteatoma in children.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".